[Zope3-dev] Re: Zope 3 Newsletter: Issue 10

[Chris Withers]

Jeffrey P Shell wrote:
> A recent post by Martin Fowler, author of the excellent Refactoring 
> book, discusses "Technical Debt" which emphasizes that it needs to be 
> easy to refactor.
> 
> http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html
> """
> Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to 
> help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the 
> quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar 
> to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs 
> interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we 
> have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design 
> choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay 
> down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the 
> better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by 
> reduced interest payments in the future.
> """

I like this :-)

> It's understandable that they should be different, given their potential 
> target audience.  But the path from S -> D should be easy to follow.

Hmmm, the implication seems to be that scripters like debt. Even with my 
scripter hat on, I don't like debt...

Chris